The secret's out: Portugal's Troia is the new Algarve, says Chelsea's Jose Mourinho

The Portuguese used to say Troia was one of their best-kept secrets. Not any more. Now they're calling it 'the new Algarve', because it has beaches to rival Portugal's south-coast resorts but – due to the opening of a new ferry service – is now only an hour from Lisbon.

Many of the capital's affluent middle classes are selling their villas in the Algarve and buying an apartment in this new, still-developing haven of golden sand, where dolphins frolic in the sea and long-necked storks stare down from chimney pots of the old fishermen's cottages nearby.

Moor-inho: The marina at Troia where Jose Mourinho has bought a holiday home

Troia is indeed special, so much so that the self-styled 'special one', newly reappointed Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho, has bought a home here. The new resort is on a long, finger-shaped peninsula, reached by a ten-minute catamaran service from Setubal – Mourinho's home town.

We – my fiancee Caroline, her 13-year-old daughter Sophie and son Jack, 11 – drove south from Lisbon to board the ferry, painted an unmissable shade of lime green.

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We rented an apartment overlooking the marina at Troia. It wasn't quite a millionaires' playground, but some fabulous yachts were moored up. It was fun to watch the comings and goings in the marina from our first-floor balcony.

But it was even more fun to drink chilled wine in a bar or restaurant at the water's edge. So far, there are just two hotels, the five-star Design Hotel and four-star Aqualuz. The 12 miles of sand are divided into several beaches, and to help negotiate the sand dunes there are boardwalks from the apartments and hotels, including one that handily leads to the beach bar.

Cool fun: Sophie and Jack with family friend Joana

There are a number of boat trips on offer from the marina. We chose a small motorboat tour of the Sado estuary, the stretch of water between the Troia peninsula and the mainland, the Arrabida Coast.

We were told to look out for the
bottlenose dolphins. I'm always sceptical about this sort of claim by
tour guides, but indeed we saw them all afternoon, closer to Setubal
harbour than I thought they'd be.

And I was sceptical, too, about the
'local seafood lunch' provided as part of the trip. I could not have
been more wrong. It was a sumptuous feast of shellfish washed down by
bottle after bottle of chilled vinho verde. It was a brilliant
afternoon.

There's more to Troia than the modern
resort at the tip of the peninsula. Heading south, drive past the Roman
ruins on the left and the golf club on the right, pass through a few
miles of dunes and you come to traditional old fishing villages a world
away from the modern buildings in Troia.

The first is Comporta, where a stork
gazes down at you from almost every chimney pot. Here I had a fantastic
huge pot of lobster risotto at the fine, traditional restaurant O Ze.

In between eating and drinking in these old villages, we walked on the rickety planks that serve as primitive harbours for the fishermen. The old and new attractions of the Troia peninsula are a delight. Local boy Mourinho's return to Chelsea was football's worst-kept secret. And now the secret of Troia is out, too.

Getting there

Sunvil Discovery (sunvil.co.uk, 020 8758 4722) offers holidays to Troia. Prices start at £679pp for seven nights' self-catering, including return flights to Lisbon with TAP and car hire. For further information on the area, see visitalentejo.com.